Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee
The Supreme Court blocked a lower court order that would have let Wisconsin voters mail their absentee ballots after Election Day during the COVID-19 pandemic, requiring that ballots be postmarked no later than April 7, 2020.
The ruling left tens of thousands of voters who had requested but not yet received their ballots unable to cast them, and drew a sharp four-justice dissent warning the Court had just disenfranchised voters in the middle of a public health emergency.
How it got here: A federal district court issued a preliminary injunction extending absentee ballot rules; the Seventh Circuit declined to stay that order; the Republican National Committee and others brought an emergency application to the Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Wisconsin's spring 2020 election was set for April 7, covering presidential primaries, a state Supreme Court seat, and hundreds of other races. As COVID-19 spread, a record number of voters sought absentee ballots, overwhelming election officials and creating a large backlog of ballots that had been requested but not yet mailed to voters. A federal district court extended both the deadline to request absentee ballots and the deadline for election officials to receive completed ones, and — on its own, without the plaintiffs asking for it — also allowed ballots postmarked after Election Day to be counted.
The question before the Court
Could a federal district court, responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, require Wisconsin to count absentee ballots mailed after Election Day, even though the plaintiffs themselves never asked for that specific relief?
The Court's answer
No — the Court blocked the part of the district court's order that let voters postmark their absentee ballots after Election Day. The majority stressed two main points: first, the plaintiffs themselves never asked for that relief in their formal motions, which the Court took as telling evidence that it was unnecessary; and second, a long-standing principle (called the Purcell principle) holds that federal courts should not rewrite election rules on the eve of an election, because last-minute changes create confusion and undermine the integrity of the process.
The receipt deadline for absentee ballots had already been extended to April 13, giving voters extra days to mail their ballots — that extension, which nobody challenged, remained in place. Allowing voters to cast ballots by mail for six days after Election Day itself went a step further, the Court said, and "fundamentally alters the nature of the election." The district court's follow-on order blocking release of election results for six days after Election Day illustrated just how far the original order had strayed from ordinary election administration.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Wisconsin voters who had timely requested absentee ballots but hadn't received them by April 7 were left with no way to vote — they couldn't safely go to the polls during a pandemic, and they couldn't mail a ballot they hadn't received. The ruling also reinforced a doctrine that federal courts generally may not rewrite election rules at the last minute, a rule that will shape future election-eve litigation.
What changes now
The stay took effect immediately before the April 7, 2020 Wisconsin election, requiring that absentee ballots be postmarked by April 7 and received by April 13. The stay was set to remain in force through the Seventh Circuit appeal and any subsequent Supreme Court review, terminating automatically if the Court later denied certiorari. The ruling did not resolve the underlying constitutional merits of the case.
What this does not decide
The Court stressed that its ruling "should not be viewed as expressing an opinion on the broader question of whether to hold the election, or whether other reforms or modifications in election procedures in light of COVID–19 are appropriate." The stay also left undisturbed the extended April 13 deadline for election officials to receive completed absentee ballots.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Ginsburg
Justice Ginsburg argued the majority's intervention would cause massive disenfranchisement: tens of thousands of voters had timely requested ballots but were unlikely to receive them before the new postmark deadline, because a pandemic-driven surge in requests had overwhelmed election officials. She disputed the majority's reading of the forfeiture issue, noting plaintiffs explicitly sought the relief at the hearing. She also turned the Purcell principle against the majority — if proximity to the election counseled restraint when the district court acted days earlier, the Court's own last-minute intervention was even more inappropriate.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the Purcell principle — a judge-made rule, drawn from the Court's 2006 decision in Purcell v. Gonzalez, that federal courts should ordinarily not change election rules close to an election date, because last-minute judicial alterations generate voter confusion and threaten the orderly administration of elections.
- A key fact for the majority was that the plaintiffs themselves never asked the district court, in their written preliminary-injunction motions, to allow ballots postmarked after Election Day to be counted. The Court treated this as significant: if the plaintiffs who sued didn't think they needed that relief, the district court had little basis to grant it on its own.
- The majority drew a sharp distinction between extending the deadline for election officials to receive completed ballots (which it left in place and was not challenged) versus allowing voters to mail their ballots after Election Day. The first is an administrative adjustment; the second effectively extends the voting period itself for six additional days beyond the scheduled election.
- The district court's follow-up order — blocking publication of any election results for six days after Election Day — demonstrated the downstream problems created by allowing post-Election Day voting. That order attempted to restrain people who were not even parties to the lawsuit, and the majority questioned whether suppressing results for nearly a week could even work in practice, with serious consequences for election integrity if it failed.
- Weighing these factors, the Court concluded the district court had overstepped by changing election rules on the eve of the election and by granting relief no party had requested, justifying intervention by the Supreme Court to correct that error before the election proceeded.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Purcell v. Gonzalez (549 U. S. 1)
The Court explicitly invoked and applied the Purcell rule against last-minute judicial changes to election procedures.